


Runs in the Family

by Shiggityshwa



Series: La Troisième Fois [10]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M, Infertility, Kid Fic, established relationships - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-15 04:03:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16926144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiggityshwa/pseuds/Shiggityshwa
Summary: Vala deals with three differently developed relationships in three AU storylines. Only chapter 3 deals with SGA. Each chapter is AU. Part 10 of 10 in the Troisième series.





	1. Carte Blanche

**Author's Note:**

> Please not this story takes place three years after 'Write-Offs'.

It’s well worth the wait. That’s all it is.

  
“Beatrice.” Calls her daughter over the boiling pot on the kitchen stove. The house isn’t too grandiose, but not entirely a shack, a small cottage on the outskirts of the village, far enough away that the school is hardly a fifteen-minute walk.

The eggs are perfectly boiled and cooling on a cotton towel against the ragged countertops. She checks the clock over her shoulder, and then rolls her eyes. “Beatrice, you are going to be late.”

“I’m here, Momma.” Her daughter steps out adjusting the straps on her pack, one of her light brown curly pigtails caught.

Wiping her hand on the front of her apron, she turns off the dial on the stove and approaches her daughter. She has his eyes, light blue and piercing from halfway across the grand room. “How did this happen, my darling?”

Little shoulders shrug, but she never turns away, confident in her abilities. “I dunno”

Keeps her warm smile and lifts the padded strap to untangle her daughter’s hair, letting it return over her back.

Beatrice’s soft eyebrows raise and nonchalantly she explains, “I don’t really want to go.”

With a sigh, she straightens out the wrinkles in her daughter’s shirt, then tugs her into a strong hug that only works to make more wrinkles. “I know, darling, but you have to try.”

“Why can’t I stay with you?” The small voice is muffled against her shirt sleeve.

“Because education is important, and your father would have wanted you to go to school and excel.” It’s becoming an overused answer at this point, but it simply has to do. She’s tired of playing good cop and bad cop, of having to love and discipline for two parents.

Of having to worry for two parents.

When she returns from walking Beatrice to school, both reluctantly separating as the bell rung, she finds the house empty.

After ten in the morning and she’s already finished her daily chores, weeded through the vegetable garden and done the washing up, polished furniture, made the beds and vacuumed all the rugs. The only difference now it’s that her hair is a bit dishevelled and her heart is very heavy.

She sits on the couch, not bothering to turn on the television and lets her worry stew in the pit of her stomach. Tries to combat the horrible visions of her daughter crying or being led astray by a stranger with her learning and finding friends, not being so isolated, not taking after her mother.

As she unstrings her apron there’s a knock at the thick wooden door. Assumes it’s another toe-headed housewife eager to welcome her and show off her lack of prowess with a power mixer and sprinkles. The neighbors are close knit in this area and having only recently arrived on this planet, she’s just been allowed to commune in activities like book clubs, where all the books are boring, or bake sales, where everyone else’s sweets taste like trash.

But when she opens the door, two men in green army fatigues await her. “Mrs. Mitchell?”

“You boys cannot leave well enough alone.” Left Stargate Command a little over a year ago with a then four-year-old, now five-year-old daughter as she tried to find a planet homey enough to get them situated. The SGC did not want her to leave, didn’t go so far as to beg her to stay, but offered her basic freedom outside the mountain as long as she agreed to stay within Colorado Springs, all while still paying her out Cameron’s benefits, but the whole situation became so tiresome.

“Mrs. Mitchell, you need to accompany us back to—”

“Well, I no longer work for the SGC, so I’m afraid your request has fallen on—” Ducks behind the door, closing it.

But there’s a thump and she meets the resistance of one of the men’s boots jammed in the opening of her doorway. Tries not to let her face display too much of the latent fear she’s always feeling because one day she ignored the warning and one day he didn’t come back. “Dr. Jackson gave us very specific orders Ma’am.”

“My daughter is at her first day of school, and if you think I’m about to pull her out so we can go back to that chaos where she has no interactions with children or sunlight, then—”

“Ma’am, he’s back.”

*

Sits in a cold metal room, just like old times, although it’s not exactly a brig, more of a holding cell for transferring. She’s very suspicious and would be more vocal about her fears if Beatrice wasn’t curled asleep with her head in her lap. She runs her fingers through her daughter’s hair, pulling out bits of leaves and other debris she managed to get caught in it in only a half day of school.

The door whooshes open and she doesn’t even acknowledge it, because every second that ticks by is just more validation that she’s fallen for their trap of anchoring her back on Earth because perhaps she’s too useful, or perhaps she knows too much.

“You don’t seem as excited as I thought you’d be.”

“That’s because I’ve dealt with your people before, Daniel.” Keeps her voice completely level, her fingers never missing a strum over her daughter’s soft hair. His hair.

He perches on the bit of bench she’s left available, his knees bumping hers and Beatrice mumbles in her sleep. “He’s here.”

“And I’m his wife, and I’ve yet to see him.”

“You think he’s not asking for you?” Daniel laughs, his eyes disappearing into many more lines on his face than she remembers. “He’s still being examined by medical, and he’s about one test away from ripping out the IV and taking off down the hallway.”

“What if he’s too different?”

“Do you love him?”

“I never stopped.”

“Then I doubt that’ll be a problem.”

Daniel shrugs off his BDU jacket, and drapes it gently over Beatrice, who twitches in her sleep but still doesn’t wake.

“What if I’m too different?”

His hand clasps over hers and then bounces against her knee. “Vala, I think you could be a completely different species at this point and he would just shrug it off.”

*

Daniel leaves, going to check on Cameron, her husband whom she hasn’t seen in four years, while she sits with her daughter who has no memories of her father aside from the ones she’s planted in her head.

Nervous and hopeful.

Anxious and scared.

“Momma?” Beatrice draws her blue eyes up from her lap, fingers tracing the wrinkles in her slacks. “What if father doesn’t like me?”

She grins softly, ignoring the vernacular, how it’s reminiscent of a daughter she’s failed before and reassures herself that this is a different child. A daughter born of love and whose parents sacrificed everything to ensure her safety, that she never know fear. At least not until now because aside from her cunning and her confidence, a bit of her self doubt has worn off on her child.

Sighs, relaxing into the weight of her daughter on her lap, the softness of her hair, the gentle rise and fall of her chest. In very precise, very clear words she explains. “Your Daddy loves you more than anything in any other galaxy. There is no way you could possibly disappoint him.”

*

She goes in alone at first, not wanting to overstimulate either Cameron, who is still not cleared medically, nor Beatrice who walked down the old corridors like she was walking through a field of mines. Daniel agreed to sit with her and brought out the old Ancient Egyptian glyph texts. After kissing her daughter and ready to be escorted from Daniel’s lab, she did not miss the familiar eye rolls as he began to explain the importance of lines in depictions of the Ra’s Eye symbol.

Two soldiers stand at the door to the medical suite which whooshes open with a gust of cool, sterile air as she walks in. Expects him to be asleep, to be beat up and covered in wires and tubes and to have a few moments to collect her own thoughts and emotions while holding his hand. Just a few seconds to reassure herself that this wasn’t another dream.  

But he’s sitting up in bed, darkened from the sun, from smudges of dirt now stained onto his skin. His face thinner and it makes him look irrevocably ill. They only manage to stare at each other from across the small area before under his breath he whispers, “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

His arms are frail and sunburnt, and he smells of open air and moss when they embrace. She buries her face in the crook of his neck while he cradles her because despite striving to be optimistic, she thought this reunion would never happen. When he peppers her skin with kisses, caresses her cheeks and arms, she cannot stop staring at him because the weight of the fear that’s been holding her down for the last four years has fallen flat from her, and she takes her first real breath.

Lays with him as he explains his capture by a slave trader and his pivotal roll in causing the uprising that would eventually lead to his freedom and a drawn out return back to the SGC. Nods against his chest at every word he utters, listens to his heart thump, his stomach gurgle. His words soak into her hair and her eyes close, reveling in his warmth, his familiarity, the complete and utter trust of another being.

“When they told me you weren’t here anymore, I figured you ran back to stealing ships and making shady deals halfway across the galaxy.”

“I never stopped looking for you.” Her own voice is far away, and he guides a blanket higher up to cover her shoulders.

“I know you didn’t, Princess.”

*

Reluctantly separated from him as Dr. Lam insisted he get a night of rest before the reintroduction of his family, of a little girl who was barely speaking and only toddled the last time he saw her. Would have put up more of a fight if his weakness wasn’t obvious in his constant naps, which appear more as bouts of unconsciousness.

So she spent one final night holding her daughter in the room where they lived for three years, stroking her arm and retelling all the stories she’s ever told about Cameron.

*

“She’s very worried of what you’ll think of her.” Pets a hand through his hair while he slowly sips at his soup. Foods have been reintroduced to his diet today as they try to wean him off the IV instated for malnourishment.

“Honey, at this point I think she’s got carte blanche until she starts dating.”

“All right.” Nods and tugs on the lobe of his ear once, watches his bright smile emerge before he slurps up another spoonful of basic broth. Her arms clasp around his head as she kisses the top of it, her body jittering with his chuckles. The spoon clanks back into the bowl and his arm slides around her waist. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Soupy lips press to the inside of her bicep. “Okay.” Taps her bum and drops another kiss to her wrist as he untangles her. “Enough waiting, bring me my kid.”

*

Beatrice’s hand tightens around hers as the whoosh of cold, sterile air puffs them both in the face. Despite all the reassurances she’s offered to her daughter of how her father fell in love with her when she was no bigger than one of the brambles he plucked from her hair, she still plucks her steps precariously and keeps her eyes wide.

Big feet are on the ground at the side of the bed despite Dr. Lam’s demands that he remain reclined for at least another day. He’s changed from the medical gown to the blue scrubs they’ve all had the pleasure of wearing so often, and at his very first glimpse of their daughter his face brightens, and his posture straightens. “Holy shit, she looks exactly like you.”

Perhaps pure flattery because she’s never had that clear of eyes, or that light of hair, or those innocent chubby cheeks. But maybe he sees the parts of Beatrice that are her, just as she sees only those that are him. “Oh Bea, you’re beautiful.”

When he reaches a hand for their daughter, she ducks behind her legs, and she’s certain his pained expression isn’t caused by an overworked body. The commonality between them, she stoops, settling on her knees and taking both of Beatrice’s hands in her own. “It’s okay to be a little scared, Darling.”

“What—”

Lifts a hand to silence him, and then hooks it onto the back of his shin. “But I promise you, your Daddy is a good man, he will always protect you, and he’s never stopped loving you.”

Beatrice’s eyes float over to him before stretching out a hand to trace the wrinkles at the bottom of his pant leg. He reaches his hand down, slower than before, now knowledgeable of the damage he may do to their daughter’s trust, but the worry is unwarranted as she sets her tiny hand in his palm.

Less than a minute later Beatrice sits in his lap, traces the wrinkles deep set by the sun in his cheeks and under his eyes as he tells her stories about cupcakes and Goose, then listens intently as she recounts how in three hours at school she managed to get into just as many fights, with boys nonetheless, and he offers her nothing but adoring support.

An hour later she’s fallen asleep laying across his chest, and he moves his arms around her careful not to tangle any of the tubes.

“What do you think?” Questions from her stoop at the end of the bed, leaning back against his legs, against one of his feet tapping rhythmically against her hip.

He plants a kiss on the crown of Beatrice’s head, tucking her tighter against him. “I think I was right when I said that she would be the greatest thing to ever happen to either of us.”


	2. Run Hard

It’s a great reminder. That’s all it is.

 

They’re in a grand marketplace on a commerce planet when she gets the familiar itch, the familiar tug. That her life is growing too stagnant, despite being married, probably due to being married, and that she could simply disappear. Remove the pigtails from her hair, prop it up in a bun, drop her jacket in the crowd and slip down the nearest alleyway towards the gate. Sure he would likely not give upon searching for her, but at least it would give a little electricity to their life, their dreary life of going to work and reading up on Ancients or Asgardians or some other race, and then going home where he continues to read after supper while she does the washing up.

Things have been different in the last few months.

Before he would openly touch her, flirt with her at work, encircle her waist while he whispered exciting suggestions, his lips tasting the skin behind her ear. He’d race home as she shifted towards him in the passenger’s seat, her hand sliding over his BDU pants, and squeezing his thigh. Sometimes they would start in the elevator, sometimes he would haul her from the mechanical doors to his apartment door and she would try her best to distract him while he fumbled with keys.

They would have sex on the couch, sometimes not make it to the couch and the wall or the floor would suitably do, sometimes the kitchen table and he always felt guilty about being dirty afterwards. They would order in Chinese or Thai food and when she fumbled with chopsticks and dropped noodles or sauce on her collarbone, he would lick it off.

Their lives were exciting on and off the field. He proposed to her one day after sex in the middle of a hot muggy summer, his air conditioning was broken and only the thinnest of sheets bound them together. Just reached for the bedside table drawer and produced a box with a perfectly ornate and sizeable ring. Knew her size and it slipped on and then she dipped back, and new sweat was born.

But that was the only thing being born.

After a year and a half of marriage and another year and a half of purposefully trying to have a child, they realized something was wrong. Something was wrong with her. A few of their rolls in bed turned out to be successful, but not for very long, and after all the pain, the blood, the tears, she felt less of an equal, less of a woman, and began to yearn for the days when she would fall asleep buried beneath a mountain instead of the unwavering pressure of his hand across her stomach.

Don’t jinx it. Everything jinxed it.

Finally, Dr. Lam in working with a fertility expert was able to discern that when tiny, innocent Adria had healed her body, she had effectively and permanently closed the channels for another baby being conceived.

It made sense. No one wanted two Orici’s gallivanting around the galaxy.

Daniel reassured her that he was perfectly content living out the rest of his life with her an only her as his immediate family, then nonchalantly suggested they might get a cat.

But she knew him before she left, and only knew him better upon her return.

He dried the blame for her with stoic emotions, with robotic hand holding, with innocent kisses and started wearing more and more layers to bed. Stopped touching her at work, then in the elevator, then all together.

It’s their fourth anniversary together and he planned the cursory getaway on an off-world planet with spas and shopping and everything that should make her feel fulfilled and pampered, but she doesn’t know if he did it out of love or duty. Doesn’t know how deep and how long her denouncement in him removing himself from her emotionally and physically will last.

That’s what makes her want to run.

So simple.

Drop the jacket and the pigtails and go. She has more than enough currency in her pocket and her hands move before her thoughts catch up to her, transferring the funds from her jacket into her pants. Her eyes dart around and focus on him chatting to a merchant at one of the stalls, and she walks backwards from him, waiting for him to look up and beckon her closer, to get her opinion on whatever’s caught his eye, but he doesn’t.

She waits, and he doesn’t and with each second that passes, with each flutter of her heart, the back of her throat tingles as if she might be sick. The decision is made then, partly by him in his unknown lack of acknowledgement of her, and by her because her body produces no form of contentment.

Slips down a side alley, ducking in behind a dumpster, and yanks her hair loose, fluffing it around her face until the jacket becomes more poignant and she flaps it off, chucking it into the bin before her. Leans her arm against the side of the cold metal and sighs hard, trembling, trying not to openly sob.

“Vala Mal Doran,” a voice calls from behind her and in her weepy, emotional state she assumes it’s him and then she’ll have to explain what she’s doing in the alley and where her jacket got off too, and deal with his seething rage when he realizes she was trying to run again.

Instead she finds a man, one whom she’s never seen before, aiming a gun directly at her head and sneering.

“Can I help you?”

“Get your hands up.” Juts the gun at her and she does as he requested, not wanting to end up some nameless body in an alleyway.

Then realizes there’s an unbalance in her not previously marked, one not brought on by the loss of children, the loss of want in her husband’s eyes. That the sentiments swirling within her, while palpable are enhanced and overtaking.

“I’ve been trailing you for so long.” The man’s chuckles are malicious, as he motions for her to turn around and she hesitantly complies. Sure, if she was more level-headed at the moment she would be able to strike a plan of attack, but the emotions, the adrenaline mixing in her head are intoxicating, almost swaying her on her feet.

Cuffs snap against her wrists and the sensation is dangerously familiar. “I lost trail of you when you went to stay with the Tau’ri, but as soon as your signature came through the gate I recognized it.”

“I’m sorry,” Her mouth is watering, and words are starting to slur out. “Am I supposed to know you?”

“I’m working a proxy position, a mercenary hired by Borwald.” A bounty hunter set up by her third husband’s family. She groans, her forehead scratching against the rusted bits of metal on the dumpster.

Turns over her shoulder to try to talk some sense into the man still holding a gun dangerously close to the base of her skull, but her tongue is heavy. Does her best to try. “I killed him in self-defence you know.”

“I don’t care.” Slams her back into the dumpster, the metal edge jamming into her temple, and she watches a drop of blood plummet towards the ground. Watches it puddle with a distracting confusion, only vaguely startled when the man whispers something dirty, something dangerous in her ear and slides Daniel’s ring from her finger. Attempts to buck back against him, bash him in the nose with the back of her head, but her aim is off, and she only manage to irritate him. His hand clamps around her neck, wrenching her to stand still. “Silly woman, do you think that I won’t shoot?”

As if to prove his point, a gun discharges. In her vision, now muddled, growing hazy and smoky, she watches as his body falls forward, bashing off the dumpster by her feet.

“Vala?” Hands cup her elbows and straighten her, but she keeps toppling over, her vision no longer in focus, instead dark and blobby. There’s clicking, then the cuffs release from around her wrists, immediately jerks to disengage herself from whoever the man before her is. His voice and hands try to settle or restrain her and she doesn’t remember anything else until waking up in the hotel room again.

*

“My head is killing me.” She presses her forehead into his cool arm, willing the high temperature in her body away.

“He drugged you, probably slipped something to you at the café.” Daniel dabs at the cut on her temple, trying to clear away the blood without reopening the wound he’s secured with two strips from the first aid kit. “You’re probably going to feel pretty crappy until it’s out of your system.”

“When will that be?”

“Probably by tomorrow morning. We’re going to have to cut our trip short to get you back and looked over by Lam.” Tosses the gauze into the bin and before she even has a chance to pipe up, he continues the conversation one sided, “and don’t tell me that you’re fine, because you’re not. Whatever he gave you made you really paranoid and very complacent, the chemical composition of it could have—”

“Shhh.” Hushes him rather rudely as she leans back against the pillows he’s piled for her.

Even with her eyes closed she knows he rolls his, and she feels the flits of his movements cleaning up the area. A few minutes later he sets a glass of water on the side table and turns off the bedside lamp muttering, “Who was that guy anyway?”

“He was a bounty hunter.”

“And what did you do that someone has a bounty out on you?” To his benefit, his voice only sounds a tad more disappointed in her than usual.

“I killed my third husband, his family must not be too thrilled that I’m still alive.”

Daniel doesn’t respond, just floats to the edge of the bed, sitting softly, his hand scooping up hers and resituating the ring upon her finger. He clears his throat and then stutters, “Why—why did you kill him?”

“Well he tried to kill me first and I was obviously better at it.”

“Vala—”

She sighs, her hand flying out to find his hair or his cheek or neck, something she can caress, but he recaptures it, and kisses her knuckles softly, using his gentleness to get her to spout the truth. “He was very physical, Daniel, and not in the good way. Everyday. No matter how hard I tried, he would just—”

“That sounds like an entirely justifiable reason.” The bed bounces with his weight as he crawls in behind her, his arms nudging beneath hers.

“You don’t blame me?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Do you blame me for anything else?”

Cranes his head back away from where it’s nestled against her shoulder. “Like what?”

“Well, I’m the one stopping us from being a complete family—”

“No Vala.”

“What.”

“That’s out of our control.” With a finger on either side of her chin he tips her head towards his, his eyes bright and clear as she fights against heavy lids. “Not once did I blame you.”

“I did.”

“Did what?”

“Blamed me.”

“Vala—”

“When I was with him, my third husband, I got pregnant and I—”

“You’re not in the right place to—”

“I couldn’t bring a baby into that, Daniel.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I wouldn’t watch as he—”

Daniel’s arms crush around her chest, swoop her forward so he’s half cradling her against his and his finger pull through her hair, travel up and down her arms in calming caresses and as she wonders why she’s realized that she’s openly crying.

Takes the comfort, rubs closer to his chest, and snakes her arms around his waist. When her breathing settles and her tears expel less frequently, he dips his head, lips crashing against hers, tongue slipping slightly into her mouth as his thumb swipes away the lingering moisture on her skin.

At separation, he bows his forehead to hers, the tip of his nose pressing hers, and he closes his eyes as if it’s the first time he’s kissed her and he’s reveling in the sensation.

“I don’t blame you.”


End file.
